Comic-Con News Bytes: Marvel, Boxtrolls, Wonder Woman!

Comic-Con remains the most exciting and exhausting fan event on the planet, with so much info now coming out of every panel that it feel at times like it will take until next year’s con for us to catch up!

Here’s at least some of what went down of interest from an animation and VFX perspective. We’ll round up more as we recover. Enjoy!

• Marvel announced second-season orders from Disney XD for its Avengers Assemble and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. It also announced a new animated series for Guardians of the Galaxy, for which a sequel to the upcoming live-action feature has been given the green light.

• At the Boxtrolls panel, LAIKA president and CEO Travis Knight said the studio was interested in making traditional hand-drawn animated features. Also, the crowd give a Boxtrolls-style get-well to cast member Tracy Morgan, who is recovering from a severe traffic accident, by thumping their chests and cheering him on. Here’s what it looked like:

• Comic-strip icon Berkeley Breathed says he has an animated feature in the works titled, Something About C-Mo, about a mysterious frozen dog found by a couple and who is trying to remember who he is and where he came from.

• On the live-action front, Marvel gave a big push to Avengers: Age of Ultron, bringing back most of the original cast (minus Scarlett Johansson and director Joss Whedon) for the panel. Footage was shown, and longtime rumors were confirmed about casting with James Spader talking about playing Ultron, Josh Brolin taking on Thanos and Paul Bettany getting an upgrade from the voice of Jarvis to the Vision.

•Ant-Man, which had gone through some changes with the departure of director Edgar Wright, had some test footage to show despite being on the verge of the start of production, as well as cast members Michael Douglas, Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll and new director Peyton Reed. The Marvel panel also confirmed Lilly as The Wasp and Stoll as the villainous Yellowjacket.

• DC also made a huge splash for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Not only was footage shown for the feature, which is not due out until 2016, but they offered fans the first look at actress Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Check it out:

Crap…it won’t be anything like Avengers..she looks like some stupid uneducated maid and her costume is even worse. A sword? so I guess DC realized that a rope of truth is actually nonsense. I think that’s an inspiration from He-Man, the Mattle toyline they have recently adopted in their comics.